Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Let's Test All the people, all the time

Let’s Test All the People, all the time

There are two competing ideas
in the Maryland General Assembly.One
seems sort of logical, the other counting what can’t be counted.

Let’s begin with the sort of
logical one.The federal law, Every
Child Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires that 95% of students be tested
annually.Over the past five years,
Maryland has tested 98.5% of its students.Students who are severely disabled are not tested.

A Frederick County delegate
has introduced a bill that would exempt from testing those students whose disability is so severe that the student is non-verbal and lacking
communicative competency.Does it make
any sense at all to test these students with grade level tests?Apparently, it does to the Department of
Legislative Services that has cautioned exempting these students could bring Maryland below the
95% threshold and that MIGHT jeopardize federal funding.Let’s be clear, this is a very small
percentage of Maryland’s students.The
law does not allow for an alternative assessment for the children with the most
significant cognitive disabilities.Exactly what is the point of this testing?!It torments the kids and aggravates the
teachers who must administer something that is not even entirely meaningful to
students without disabilities.This bill
was introduced last year and failed.Looks like it is going to fail again this year. No one ever said politics is logical.

Another requirement of the
ESSA is that each state submit a plan that explains how teachers will be
evaluated.Maryland’s plan has been
submitted and approved by the U.S. Secretary of Education.However, Governor Hogan calls this plan a
farce.Here is why.The State’s plan says that test scores will
account for 55% of a teacher’s rating.Hogan thinks that is entirely too low and is pressuring the State Board
of Education to raise it to 85% of a teacher’s rating.It would be delightful in Wonderland if we
could truly assess a teacher’s effectiveness by just looking at test scores.But the fact is that students' test scores
have never been shown to be correlated with a teacher’s ability to teach. You would think that people who seem obsessed with numbers would have wanted some research to support this idea. There are other factors such as the teacher’s
relationship with the children. And the
teacher’s knowledge of the content and the teacher’s enthusiasm for the
subject.These factors may influence test
scores but there are other factors that also influence test scores over which a
teacher has little to no control.These
are the abilities of the students, the support of the student’s family and the
availability of teaching materials.

The American culture has
always had a fascination with things we can measure and put a number to.Perhaps it is a test of our good sense to see
how far we are willing to let this fascination take over our schools.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

I have been in the field of special education for 53 years. I have taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. I also have been an administrator of a local school system's special education department and the assistant superintendent for special education for the Maryland State Department of Education. Thirty-three years ago I started The Harbour School a special private school for children with autism, learning disabilities and other learning challenges.